On Thursday, a classroom at Yale Divinity School will be named for Pennington and his portrait will grace the seminar room’s wall.

According to Lecia Allman, a 2016 graduate of the Divinity School, it was illegal at the time in Connecticut to educate African Americans from other states. But while Pennington could not enroll at Yale, he was allowed to attend classes.

“They allowed him to sit in on classes, but he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t ask questions, he couldn’t use the library and he couldn’t get a degree,” said Allman, who led the effort to honor Pennington. “But he took the offer because he wanted the education.”

After attending Yale, Pennington became an abolitionist in New York and formed an organization to provide for former captives of the Amistad to continue their education once they returned to Sierra Leone. The Amistad captives were to be sold as slaves but took over the ship and ended up in jail in New Haven. Their case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which gave them their freedom.

In another accomplishment of Pennington, “he formed a legal association that ended the whites-only rule in New York City streetcars,” Allman said. He also served as a pastor of the Dixwell Avenue United Church of Christ.

Yale Divinity School Dean Gregory Sterling said honoring Pennington is important “because it’s a way of, first of all, honoring somebody who should be honored and has not been and, secondly, it recovers part of our past that has been neglected and shouldn’t be neglected.”

Sterling said 36 percent of this year’s incoming class is from “under-represented groups, such as African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans.

“It’s critical that they know that people from the groups from which they come have also been at the Divinity School for a very long time and have played roles that have largely been understated,” he said.

The Rev. Frederick “Jerry” Streets, current pastor of Dixwell Avenue UCC and an adjunct professor at Yale Divinity School, said Pennington “was a remarkable person, obviously a bright person, an intelligent person” who “did well even though he had to do so in segregated conditions.”

Pennington previously was honored by having his portrait hung in the YDS Common Room, joining former deans of the school, but Allman said naming a classroom for him is a more fitting tribute.

Allman will be one of the speakers at the dedication of the room, which will take place at 4:30 p.m. Thursday in Niebuhr Hall, 409 Prospect St. Then, a portrait and a plaque will be unveiled.

“I fought real hard for this,” said Allman, who is now a fellow and palliative care chaplain at Emory University. “To me he’s a role model because he set an intentional goal and he didn’t let circumstances of that scary secret he was harboring stop him.”